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I just spent the last hour or so playing the game. I haven't progressed that much in, I captured 6 manamons and didn't get to the first arena yet. As many people said before it's extremely obvious where you got your inspirations from and there's more than enough simularities at how this game works VS the actual Pokemon games, right down to things like having to walk up to, then talk to the store clurk to start the store menu. But credit where credit's do I think you nailed presentation Very well, from the various manamon sounds or descriptions to having original music. I'm not yet sure if I'm going to buy the game. I'll keep going tomorrow and we'll see how it goes. SO far though I definitely think this is a much better game than the gate.

Agreed! As I discover words that JAWS doesn't pronounce correctly, I add it to my word list so that next time it will be correctly pronounced. Although I'm fairly sure this can be done with SAPI, why should I maintain two lists? So let me choose how I want the game voiced.

Ok, so the game is fantastic. I don't mind playing a pokemon cloan, or similar game. Plus i can tell where your creativity comes through, like with monster descriptions for example. Let me finish the demo, and you will most likely get 40 dollars from me. Great job man, one pokemon fan to another, i like it.

First of all, NVDA access would be lovely. You did it with Paladin and it worked like a charm as far as I can see. This game doesn't require pinpoint timing, thus no need to worry about Jaws keyhook. I'd like to see NVDA support, please. David isn't bad, especially since you can change the voice rate, but I'd like a much better idea of how to pronounce the names of the manamon I'm finding.

I'm getting train points, but haven't been told about them yet. I can deduce what they are, but that's beside the point. As a pokemon fan I dove right in; a newbie might get a bit confused.

Is there a way to actually figure out what an item does before you buy it? I saw a bone dagger in a shop in the city where the first stadium is located, but have no idea what it does, and spending 500 gold just to find out is a touch annoying. If this is just how it is, that's fine.

Another thing I might be missing: is there a way to see the level of a tamer's pokemon? All it seems to say is something like "Lass Irene sent out Wormer", or whatnot. It is nice to know the level of what you're fighting.

Is there a way to actually see what a move does? How strong it is, whether it's got any effects? I mean, Growl is Growl (lowers attack), Tail Wag is Tail Whip, Claw Swipe is Scratch...but what about Pounce? Energy Burst? The branch move Leafox learns? When it eventually comes time to replace moves, I know that level doesn't guarantee the move is better, particularly given the attack vs. magic attack split.Or maybe I'm supposed to just take it a lot more easily than I would playing straight-up pokemon, and brute force wins the day.

So far I'm in the city with the first stadium and I have only a Leafox at level 10. I found some young kid who wants to double-battle me even though I only have one creature trained, btw, so you might want to have a look at that.

Generally liking the game though. It's big, and easy to get lost in.

Friendly suggestion: I know a lot of work went into this game, and I know it took awhile, but forty bucks is quite a bit to ask given the length and quality of previous VG-Storm offerings. One might pay forty dollars for a mainstream pokemon game, but that's because 1. they're very, very well fleshed out, 2. they're balanced by professionals and 3. they're tried and true. Might I then suggest dropping the price to thirty bucks? Or hell, dropping it to twenty-five, even. Because a forty-dollar price tag may scare people off, but a twenty-five or thirty-dollar price tag may entice more people to buy. Individually you lose money; collectively you gain it. It's just a thought though. I'm going to hold off on even considering purchase just yet, because I want to know just how much I'm missing, just how much I will be able to find out for myself, not to mention some impressions on game balance and such from others who take the plunge first. I nearly didn't pay my electricity this month, so I don't have disposable income lying around.

I would like to welcome you to the world of Manamon!Manamon is a turnbased roleplaying game in which you capture various feral monsters you find around the world and use them to help you complete the storyline.It features experimental online gameplay which will allow you to trade and battle your friends to determine which of you is the stronger Manamon Tamer.

Storyline

In the world of Tangeria, children around ages 10 to 14 become Manamon Tamers. A Manamon Tamer is someone who captures and befriends creatures in the wild. The tamer will then battle with other Tamers in order to gain more experience. Its a Manamon Tamer's job to collect and train Manamon in hopes of becoming the Manamon Master, but the road to become the master is never easy.While traveling across the world, you will occasionally discover stadiums. Stadiums are battle arenas with powerful leaders who will put your Manamon to the test.You must defeat seven of these leaders in order to gain admittance into the Master's Stadium where you will battle the Manamon Master. The Manamon Master is widely regarded as the strongest Manamon Tamer in the land of Tangeria, and its for that title that you endeavor.In the game, you will play as a brand new Manamon Tamer who hopes to take on this Stadium Challenge.That's your plan, at least. But when you discover an evil organization bent on the typical goal of world domination, your plans to become the Master might be interrupted somewhat.Its a long way from 1 stadium to the next, so your bound to meet lots of people and have many adventures along the way.Who knows what your Manamon adventure may bring!

Features

158 Manamon Creatures to discover, capture, and fight against.Over 200 different attacks these Manamon can learn.A large world in which to immerse yourself.A complex turn based battle system.A unique system of straight forward navigation which was first introduced in the game Paladin of the Sky and was improved upon in Manamon.Lots of items for you to find and use in order to help yourself during your journey.Many types of equipment you can give your Manamon to make them stronger.Several minigames for you to play throughout your adventure.Creative sound design making all of the cities, caves, and battles come alive.An experimental online system which will allow you to battle and trade with your friends.An online battle recorder which allows you to relive noteworthy battles.A few postgame surprises.Self voicing using SAPI 5 compatible voices.Demo limitations

Manamon is a shareware product, meaning you'll have to pay in order to experience the full feature set and storyline.Manamon does offer a generous demo mode which will allow you to reach the second stadium leader.Apart from all online functionality being disabled, you can play the entire game unrestricted up until this point.

Hello Jayde,Most of the information you wanted is obtainable.If you don't want to read the entire Manual, just read the key shortcuts section and it will explain a lot about how to retrieve that kind of infrmation.Press N when focused on an item to find out what it does, or L over a Manamon to check its level, for example.With regard to the price, games like this take an incredibly long time to develop, to say nothing of the development cost.While I understand that the price may seem high, please keep in mind that I've been working on this for close to 1 and a half years.Best Regards,Aaron Baker

@jade:You can press N while over just about any menu item (an item, a move, a creature etc) to get a description. There are plenty of other hot keys in the manual for obtaining extensive details such as stats when viewing creatures and equipment. You can see the level of any creature (whether your own, a tamers, or a random encounter) by pressing l.

Hi I really like the game Aaron. I'm not sure if it's worth $40 but it's at least worth $25-30 since it will take at least 100 hours to catch and train everything. I wonder how the train point system works. How many do you get in total and is there a way to increase the number you get or is it all random? I second the NVDA support thing, especially since this game was made with BGT which makes that really easy to do because dozens of people have made speech libraries and making one takes a matter of a couple hours at most for the most sophisticated libraries. The sound design is solid as well, though that's a secondary concern in these kinds of games. I've played about 2.5 hours and should probably stop before I burn myself out.\As you probably know I'm really really stingy when it comes to buying things. And I decided to buy this. The hours I'll spend playing the game will be worth the money spent on it, imho.Not sure if it's really prudent to load every sound into memory at the start of the game. On my system the game uses a whopping 380 mb of memory, which is just wild when programs like firefox don't usually use that much unless you have dozens of tabs or ideos open. I know that it makes the game appear faster but at the cost of so much memory, it's just not really a good tradeoff imho.

Ha, yeah, thanks for the manual advice. Silly me, I didn't check it till afterword, and of course most of what I want is all there. I was seeing some inconsistency with wild pokemon level being announced vs. tamer pokemon level not being announced, and thought it might've been missed. Heaven knows it would've been a simple mistake. But I'm glad to know there are hotkeys to describe stuff. Also like that feature where you can have a human pronounce manamon names. That'll give me a better idea of how to say them, and probably how to spell them.

Regarding price, I won't get into an argument with you here, but ask yourself this.What's better: 10 people each paying 25 bucks, or 3 people paying 40 bucks? Because the higher price tag might very well make such a scenario come to pass (bigger numbers, of course). This community is notoriously tight-fisted, and given some of the flops that have cost fairly big money for what they offered, I'm not too surprised. I am not, absolutely not, saying that Manamon is such a flop, btw. I have far too little knowledge to say so. I'm only saying that the high price tag might actually turn away enough people that your overall profits are significantly impacted. This says nothing about the game's quality or the work you put into it.

I am not sure how to say this so I’m going to say it the best I can. This is just such a clear remake of the Pokémon game. Is this even legal? One thing I like about Braillemon is that it is the real thing and it is free so it can be. Also that the game has been worked on and updated for about 3 years now. Braillemon is not 100% complete but it is close to it and this way we can have the real game the real experience. To change the name around, and make a little different then charge $40 to it is I feel a dishonor to the real Pokémon game TV show story and in some ways a dishonor to Braillemon. Another game came out a while ago Sarah and The Castle of Wizardry which made me wonder to how that was legal and slightly sad when I played it because it was only a quarter if that of what the real HP gaming experience would be. The only character that was changed in that game was Harry to Sarah. Would anyone want to play a game called Larry Notter and the mortermers slate? Granted I know that going through the proper channels to get the rights to make a video game into an audio game and charge for it would be a lot of money, legal documents, and red tape. No doubt if someone else followed in the footsteps of daigonite maybe the blind community would finally have a Harry Potter game and some others as well. I’m not at all trying to say that it’s easy to make a game but to spend hard work making a game that you’re not going to sell, so that blind players can have the same experience as there sighted peers is just incredible. Changing someone else’s work so that you can make it slightly different and sell it off as your own work doesn’t really sit right with me. If I took a classmate’s mid-term paper and changed the title, changed some of the words around that in no way would make it my paper. If I do research and I get all this good information I still have to site it I can’t just change the wording of it. It would be another story if you emailed Nintendo and said hey would you mind if I made a game for the blind like Pokémon? I can change the names if you want and so on. I know what it’s like to want to play games that are out for sighted people. I want to be out there going around my neighborhood playing Pokémon Go. I want to play Sims games and all that. I also believe that they should have to be made 110% accessible for everyone! Yes I know what it feels like to be left out in the cold while sighted peers play the games I long to it sucks! I don’t think taking something that isn’t ours and trying to make it into our own thing is going to get us there. It’s not going to get us the games we want and it’s not the right way to go about it. I have no doubt that you put a lot of work, time, and effort into this game. I know that you as well as the beta testing team have done countless hours of bug hunting and fixes. However I cannot support a project that is someone else’s work.

Second, a question/concern/potential gripe. Sometimes when I'm switching manamon (either because one dies or for experience) the foe seems to get a free attack. I have, for instance, had my Leafox die, brought in Owlaw, only to see him hit before I can even select an attack. And then my level 10 Owlaw is somehow faster than a level 15 Hydrake, desppite having been outquicked when he switched in. Is this some sort of deliberate mechanic, or is there some bugginess happening?

Third, I'm gonna address the "rip-off" comments. And I feel no desire to put on kid gloves. You've been warned.

This doesn't pretend to be a totally original experience. Its layout, its details and its lore are unique, but its framework is unapologetically borrowed from pokemon. Accept that for what it is. Go on, take a deep breath.Now, if you don't like the pokemon formula, don't play manamon. But for heaven's sake get off Aaron's back.Do you know largely why he's done this? Do you know why making a direct Pokemon or Zelda or Harry Potter or Mario game would be a really insanely dangerous idea for the blind community? One word: licensing.Aaron wasn't being lazy here, or unoriginal because he can't be bothered. Unless I am totally misreading the situation here, he's doing this because 1. he loves pokemon, 2. he can't really risk just remaking the game (particularly not if he wants to make money with it, BTW), and 3. he wanted to flex his creative muscles in a known area. Consider this the video-game equivalent of fanfiction. That's legal, but trying to sell it wouldn't be. Aaron has changed just enough that he won't be sued by Nintendo or Gamefreak for more money than he'll make in a lifetime, and is trying to give you folks a pokemon-like experience. Is it perfect? No, it's not, and if you're one of those people who has to have the unvarnished pokemon experience you grew up on, then wait for Braillemon to sort out its bugs and stuff, and go play that.

For the record, I really do admire Daigonite, given that she's not making money off that project and can't legally charge for it, but is still trying to do it anyway.

So, yeah. Next time you open your mouth to whine about something's lack of originality, give it some thought before you hit "submit". It's ungrateful as hell, and shows you haven't considered the entire situation. We all make that mistake sometimes, but when making that mistake risks putting someone else in a bad light, one should display a little extra caution.

Definitely going to look into this, though as Jade said, I would seriously think about lowering the price tag for more longterm gain... I'm sorry to say it, but given previous offerings, I'm very cautious about where I spend my money. I'm also curious where you get the word Manamon from... and what it's supposed to mean. Pokemon, though some may not know it, actually does have a meaning in regards to the way the game works.

Your games are freekin amazing, that's all there is to it, and I'll be buying this one asap. This is just what I needed, can't wait to battle online. I thought about trying to create something like this a while back because I wanted so badly to have a pokemon-like experience, but while I was thinking about atempting it you were actually doing it! Just awsom, all I can say.

Hi@aronbaker I congratulate you. This is a great game. Tomorrow I'll buy it.I have only one suggestion, I'd love you to add to the game support for NVDA@Jayde I honestly believe that if the game was worth $ 25, users would complain because it is worth less and so successively..I notice that in the blind community all want free, and free developers that make games are much more valued than the developers who make commercial audiogames.As said above, a video game never goes mainstream of $ 60, so this price of $ 40 is more than logical for all content that has the game.greetings and thanks.

So far I actually really like it, which is ironic considering I never got into the Pokémon craze back in the 90's and am currently laughing at people's obsession with Pokémon Go. When I read the description I was predisposed not to be interested but I thought what the heck? Admittedly the price tag does raise concerns about whether you'll make as much money as you hope to, but then again I don't doubt there are plenty in this community who would complain if you charged thirty or even twenty bucks for it. I for one will pay the forty bucks as soon as I'm able to. I just have to figure out a good party. LOL.

How exactly do training points work? i've not really seen a pattern for how many you need to raise a stat. I'm guessing it changes based on level and manamon?On another note, while I know this has the framework of Pokemon, I absolutely love the touches and atmosphere you have used to make it your own. Great job. Now I'm unsure whether to buy it now, or to wait for a few weeks until after I go away.

Hi,Manamon is enspired by Pokemon, Digimon, YuGiO, all of those types of games.I realize that many people won't be interested in such a game, that's why I give a large demo.You can play it for a very long time to decide whether or not its right for you.@jayde, the multiple attacks have to do with rounds.So, what happens is if you switch out one character, who is faster than your opponent, to one who is slower than your opponent, they will get two attacks.This will only happen when your KOed if you dyed from something like scorch or poison.Hope I helped.Best regards,Aaron Baker

Aaron, that's...not entirely true I'm afraid. In the fight against a particular boss just after the first gym, I faced something quite powerful, and it kept using attacks without my manamon being able to do anything. Not even select an attack.

Incidentally...

slightspoilersahead

Currently have a party of Vulpine at level 21, Owlaw at level 17, Ferridae at level 9 (pure steel type), Chingle at level 9 and some ghost-ground mimic-chest-monster thing whose name I can't remember. So far so good. The first stadium is actually a considerable challenge, and the boss fight I alluded to earlier almost had me pulling my hair out. But I think there are two possible outcomes there. I'm gonna try for the better one.

Aaron, just a quick note here:When you have a sentence like "Stop it, Gregg!", there should always be a comma before the person's name. To write "Stop it Gregg!" would be wrong. I've seen a few of these, and they should be dead easy to fix. It's a bit harder to tell with SAPI, but the writing looks a bit better this time around, so kudos on that.

Also, kudos on mixing up types a little bit. There are many direct comparisons to pokemon (fire, water, grass, ground), but some notable differences, not to mention that some of the swaps (shadow, sound, holy, undead, magic) appear to have straight-up uniqueness.

My only concerns, balance-wise, are these, and they're not guaranteed issues, they're just immediate attention-getters:1. Aerial Vision gives +5 accuracy at a low level. This mon also has Solar Conversion for +1 attack and +1 defense. If it ever gets a high-powered but low-accuracy move, that's going to be seriously problematic unless the mon itself has bad stats.2. Soul Split taking away half a mon's max health is ouch. I suppose Superfang did it, but it was on a normal type with bad stats; can this ghost-ground type say the same? If not, it's going to be a metagame fixture.

Oh, and a question:Is there anywhere in game that tells you exactly how status effects work? While paralyzed, I was still actually going first, I just failed to act some of the time. I have not yet been burned, but poison appears to be self-explanatory, as is sleep.

Anyway, this is a promising start. I'm having a ton of fun so far. Getting semi-close to the end of the demo though, methinks, which makes me sad.